The First and Second Red Scare of the United States paved the way for a long standing fear of communism and proved to be one of America’s largest periods of mass hysteria. Throughout the years authors and analysts have studied and formed expository albeit argumentative books and articles in an attempt to further understand this period of time; the mindset held during this period however is shown to be completely different compared to now.
Major and still important was the First Red Scare stemming from the First World War’s end and America’s Great Depression beginning to kick off. With food and living expenses drastically increasing certain propaganda began to appear. Perhaps one of the most notable of these was Lenin’s “Letter to the American Workers” which appeared in the United States in 1919. Loosely tied but heavily attributing to the problem was Ludwig Martens’ appearance later that year claiming to be a representative of the Foreign Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. (Murray, p. 46-47)
With these figures imposing upon the American people a certain kind of pressure to rise up the American government found it to be of good retaliation to release a kind of reverse propaganda arguing that the Bolshevik’s movements encouraged chaos and anarchy. This proved to be very true as Americans experienced riots and strikes by working class laborers in the Steel and Coal Strikes of 1919 as well as the Boston Police Strike. These occurrences exposed and provided an apparently terrifying insight into the influences of the now Soviet Russia. It was with these that America found it even more necessary to release more propaganda; it was with this new propaganda that targeted children and make them aware of the problem with very little alarm. ...
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...ryone worried that communism would engulf the world at any minute. Was the problem really a hidden spy system of Soviets or just a number of men united in accusing people much the same way as the Salem Witch Trials? Yes and no, in a sense, personally, I’m not worried about it.
Works Cited
• Murray, Robert K. Red Scare. Denmark. Museum Tusculanum, 2000. Print.
• Brody, David. Steelworkers in America: the Nonunion Era. University of Illinois, 1998. Print.
• Fitzgerald, Brian. McCarthyism: The Red Scare. Minneapolis. White-Thompson, 2007. Print.
• Faragher, John Mack. Out of Many: a History of the American People. 5th ed. Vol. 2. Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.
• Fried, Albert. McCarthyism: the Great American Red Scare: a Documentary History. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.
• Heale, M.J. McCarthy’s Americans. Athens. Georgia UP, 1998. Print.
However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower, who compared the spread of communism to the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it prompted many families to purchase personal bunkers, stocked with enough resources to live for weeks (Doc C)....
Times change and people come and go, but fear is a constant, and in “The Great Fear” by J. Ronald Oakley, he describes the wave of fear that occurred in the 1950s. In 1692, the townspeople of Salem were scared into believing that they were among witches, and in 1950’s the “Red” Scare destroyed thousands of peoples lives that were accused of being Communists. Those accused in both witch hunts were put on trial, and while many were killed in Salem, the Red Scare had blacklisted those persecuted.
With the onset of the Cold War, a growing Red Scare would cripple American society – effectively plunging the nation into mass hysteria and unrest over the fallacious threat of communist infiltration. This reaction was precipitated by Republican senator, Joseph McCarthy, in his speech, “Enemies from Within”, delivered in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February 1950. McCarthy paints communists in a particularly harsh light to generate anti-Soviet sentiment within the American public. He uses juxtaposition to engender both indignation and fear in the audience to achieve this effect.
Morrison, Samuel E. The Oxford History of the American People, vol. 1. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1994. Sun Tzu.
. The Venona project was a military investigation decoding Soviet cables going in and out the United States. These cables revealed hundreds of citizens and immigrants all on American soil that passed very confidential information to Soviet intelligence. (Citation here) This alarming discovery of spies and the success of them gathering information showed the Soviet Union and communisms ability to influence and control. It was espionage that led to the trails of Julius and Ethal Rosenburg. The Rosenburg were American citizens indited, convicted, and executed for passing confidential information to Soviet officials, which aided them in the duplication of nuclear weapons specifically the atomic bomb. Had the Soviet Union not gained access to such a vital piece of information, the pivoting point of psychological fear to actual physical fear spiraling a world wind of cause and effects around the world, then perhaps the fear its self would not have grown to such status. The Soviet Union’s espionage was a war on American soil, fought secretly to dismantle the super power of the United States.
The Red Scare was given its name because everyone feared the idea of communism (“Red”) in America. Fear, especially spread out among a group, is a dangerous and chaotic thing that can cause people to do things that they would not normally do. It can cause people to betray others close to them or not trust some people they would normally trust.
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.
The Red Scare in the 1950’s was actually America’s second red scare. The 1920’s red scare was what helped start suspicion over Communists, but was put off during World War 2. It was no coincidence that what many people called the second red scare ignited after World War 2, during the Cold War, in the 1950’s. The 1920’s red scare started because Americans were paranoid over the fact that Russia may seek revenge after they had overthrown a royal Russian family in 1917. What started Communist ideas in the U.S at the time was the fact that since the war was over many of people were out of jobs which caused people to ask how efficient was the government. The most successful and noteworthy of all the Soviet parties in the 1920’s had to be the International Workers of the World, which was also called the I.W.W or the Wobblies. The Wobblies first strike was on January 21 1919 where about 35,000 shipyard workers struck. They were immediately labeled reds, or Communists. After the first strike mass panic struck the U.S and many major chain stores had to reassure their customers that their workers would not revolt. A mayor named Ole Hansen from Seattle took the Wobblies strikes personally. Strikes continued over the next 6 months and were labeled as “crimes against society”, “conspiracies against the government” and even “plots to establish Communism”. This was when Attorney General A. “
Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, New York: Little, 1995. Brown and Company, 1998.
The Russian Revolution in the fall of 1918 also contributed. to America's unrest,.
Since the 1950s, most Americans have condemned the McCarthyite witch-hunts and show trials. By large majorities, Americans oppose firing communists from their jobs or banning communist speakers or books.[2] But over the past several years, increasing numbers of historians, writers and intellectuals have sought to minimize, explain away and justify McCarthyism. A spate of books and articles touting new historical evidence has tried to demonstrate that communism posed a real danger to American society in the 1940s and 1950s. They argue that even if some innocent people suffered and McCarthy was reckless, he was responding to a real threat.[3] As a result, Joe McCarthy doesn't look so irresponsible in hindsight.
"The Red Scare: McCarthyism." Essortment Articles: Free Online Articles on Health, Science, Education & More... Web. 29 Dec. 2011. .
"(Cook p77). Fear was the greatest underlying cause of the McCarthy movement; fear of communism, fear of the loss of freedom, fear of being accused or fear of what would happen if someone challenged the movement. Works Cited Rogin, Paul. The 'Standard'. The Intellectuals and McCarthy: the Radical.
The Red Scare was a period of time, post-World War I, in the United States in which people feared the rise of communism, socialism, and anarchism. Some say that what caused the red scare was the Russian revolution and the overthrowing of the czar by the Bolsheviks who implemented communism in Russia, which left the country in turmoil. However, the real cause of the red scare was the wave of strikes that hit the US due to the fact that lots of people were left jobless and war industries without contracts after World War I ended, and many other issues rising such as the demand for higher wages. In a short amount of time, lots of people became extreme anti-communists including A. Palmer Mitchell whose solution to this problem was deportation of
The red scare was a time where people were falsely accused of being communist spies, and would be sent to prison. If somebody hated their neighbor, a co-worker, or even a teacher they could just accuse them of being a communist spy. Some cases were even so severe as in the case with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were accused for stealing information on the atomic bomb and giving the information to the...